Egypt: Worst scenarios for W.H.

The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia caught the Obama administration almost completely off guard, and the White House is still struggling to keep pace with events a week after pro-democracy demonstrations first rocked Cairo.

Besides the consequences for Egypt and the Mideast, the United States and the Obama administration have a lot riding on the resolution of the crisis. For a White House that likes to control the narrative — and map out contingencies — the nightmare scenarios are piling up. Here are some of them and why they won’t necessarily play out. So much for that pivot to jobs

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This was supposed to be the week President Barack Obama and his Cabinet finally microfocused on jobs and the economy, with a carefully calibrated rollout of their brand-new innovation and jobs agenda. Instead they find themselves scrambling to deal with the disintegration of a key ally and the possibility of a domino effect among other dictatorial, but seemingly stable, Middle East allies.

To say the crisis comes at a terrible time is an understatement. Not only is it a distraction, it’s one of Obama’s most challenging “3 a.m.” foreign policy challenges — and a depressing reminder of America’s diminished influence in the world’s most volatile region.

“This is more an Egypt issue than anything to do with America,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a longtime expert on the region. “We tend to be so America-centric, but Egypt is a very sophisticated country. ... This isn’t anti-American; it’s an Egyptian event. We need to understand that.”

All of this is casting a pall over a West Wing that seemed to be on an upswing. “We’re struggling to figure all this out,” a top official who spent much of the weekend on the crisis told POLITICO.

Obama aides now worry that the new instability in the Middle East, which could spread to other nations like Jordan, Algerian and Morocco, could completely overwhelm the White House’s new focus on the economy —– just like previous firestorms over health care reform and the BP oil disaster.

Several officials from previous administrations said Obama shouldn’t let Egypt scuttle his jobs pitch and urged him to ditch the obsession with micromanaging crises, projecting the image of a commander in chief absorbed in every meeting. Instead, they said, he needs to delegate more decision making to his appointees, freeing him up to continue his post-State of the Union jobs and innovation campaign.

“Unless we are actually talking about war — and this isn’t a war — there’s no need to involve Obama in absolutely everything. He doesn’t need to be in every single meeting,” said a former State Department official who otherwise admires Obama’s positioning on the issue so far. “He has a choice. He can monitor Egypt and still stick with his jobs message.”

On Sunday, the White House seemed to be getting the memo, dispatching Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to five Sunday morning talk shows, where she distanced the administration from the dictator we have long subsidized, urging Hosni Mubarak to embrace a peaceful “transition to democracy.”